Drinking
water should become better and more accessible to all citizens throughout Europe,
according to a 2013 citizens’ initiative that the European Commission plans to
follow, according to a presentation outlining the Commission’s strategy on
Thursday.
This is the
first time that the European Commission has responded to a citizen petition
that garnered 1.8 million signatures. The Right2Water initiative makes the
legal claim that all people have the inalienable right to clean drinking water.
European
tap water is clearly much better than its outdated reputation, and almost 100
percent of the bloc’s drinking water is safe, but only one in five Europeans
believe in water purity outside their home country.
The
Commission hopes to change their perception with the new initiative.
“People
need to be able to fully trust that the water they consume…to make tea or
coffee, is safe,” said Karmenu Vella, EU Commissioner for Environment.
Good can get better
In order to
improve water purity, Brussels is now expanding the blacklist of bacteria or
industrial substances that could potentially dangerous if ingested and
therefore filtered out of drinking water.
The
European Commission will, in fact, take the initiative a step further by making
it possible for every household to find exact information about water quality
online. The declared goal is for EU citizens to drink more tap water, according
to the Berlaymont, “if they do, households can potentially save more than €600
million a year,” adds Commissioner Vella.
Households
and individual residents can save even more money by consuming cleaner public tap
water as it costs less than one cent per litre, a fraction of the cost of
bottled water. In order to assist poorer households, the Commission wants to
get each EU member state to set up more public taps.
Cutting
down on the number of plastic water bottles used by European residents would
have a major impact on waste management and the environment in the bloc, as
plastics disposal is a problem within the EU.
“Better
water quality has reduced bottle consumption by an estimated 17 percent,
meaning that fewer plastic bottles are used,” said Frans Timmermans, Commission
Vice-President Thursday, while adding that EU restaurants and pubs should offer
their guests tap water free of charge. “We did not think up a law that will
force them to do this, but it would be a nice touch.”
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/eu-commission-wants-clean-drinking-water-europeans/